


Headache

by Reignfinite



Category: Grayson (Comics)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-07-10 12:00:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6984217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reignfinite/pseuds/Reignfinite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dick Grayson's headache is starting to suspiciously feel like more of a heartache. However he refuses to believe that. He refuses to believe anything that's happened in the last few hours.</p><p>Spoilers for Grayson #19, if you haven't reached that bit yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Headache

**Author's Note:**

> Scenes within this fic are set in the in-betweens of some scenes in the comic.

He knew sitting here, wallowing over everything was useless, but he couldn’t do move on without this. _Two minutes_ , he thought. _That’s all I need._

His head clutched in his hands, his finger’s tightened around his skull, blunt tips of the gloves scratching against his scalp. He pressed his eyes closed and tried to breathe but everything was flashing before him in the speed of a bullet and Dick felt like he was drowning.

* * *

_Two bodies pressed flushed. Arms coiled around torsos, save for the one that held the grapple gun. Momentum pushed them a wide arc over a glowing city._

_Something clenched in his gut and it wasn’t the height of their swing. No, he’d mastered his fear of heights long before he was brought into this life. It certainly wasn’t the exploding chopper somewhere behind overhead either. Dick knew there was a thousand to one chance that any sort of debris would hit them fatally or cut the wire they were swinging on._

_He wasn’t sure if it’s adrenaline because that barely made his insides flip nowadays. Sometimes though it did take him by surprise. Sometimes, he has to wonder if it’s that undeniable thirst for danger he possesses that he feels secure in the arms of the top agent of Spyral._

_Aftershave. Sweat. A distinctly masculine scent that only Agent One owned. All those were imprinted into memory despite the fact that the wind was blowing those all away._

_Hard, overheated muscle in front of him. A vice-like grip around his waist. A tight-set pair of lips that conveyed only disdain for his naivety that were framed by a well-kept beard that scratched Dick’s forehead when he tucked his head in when debris whizzed past his ear and when they were swinging up and around for a landing._

_“Idiot,” was the only hateful breath he heard that night from the fearsome Agent One before Helena pulled him to the side to give him an earful as they ran to a new exfil site._

* * *

He had already spent sixty seconds furiously tugging at his hair and cursing under his breath and losing it then hoping to catch it again and bending over his knees like he was going to be sick.

He was drowning. His chest certainly hurt like it. His head hurt too, like it was being squeezed by deep water pressure. His throat was tight and his stomach was turning. Everything hurt. Every muscle, every nerve, but Dick had learned to ignore the pain since Bruce. He has learned to look after himself, check for and dress his own wounds since Bruce. He’s learned to mentally block out the pain and focus on the escape.

Not tonight.

Something was suffocating him from inside and he didn’t know how to ignore it.

* * *

_It had been foolish to track down the Old Gun himself, but he believed it all could have been dealt with without anybody dying. Had he only known then that Agent One and Agent Eight had been sent to track him down—Had he known that Agent Eight would have intervened and shot Old Gun after he had given Dick the eyes…_

_He wouldn’t have gone at all in the first place._

_Agent Eight—Alia is down. Agent One is screaming at his ear, calling him, but Dick doesn’t respond. He had been so_ close _. Just a bit more and nobody would’ve needed to perish._

_“Alia, this is Tiger—Dammit, do you copy?!” The panicked desperation is evident in Agent One’s voice. Dick knew that tone all too well. “Thirty-seven. Thirty-seven! Do you copy? Over.”_

_Children’s screams for help filled the air, mingling with Agent One’s distressed calls. ‘A man fell out of the sky!’ ‘He has a gun!’ ‘Blood’s coming out of him!’_

_And all Dick could do was sit there and stare at the spot where Old Gun fell before he took his own aim._ ‘Did the boy remember his father’s face? Did he recognize his dead body?’

_The answer came soon enough. He sat there and he listened to the cacophony of terror in the voices of both man and child._

_“D-dad? Daddy!?”_

_“Alia! Thirty-seven?! Agent Thirty-seven!”_

_It was impossible to recover Old Gun’s body in the midst of public panic. Agent Eight’s body was collected however after an exfil team flew in to take him, Agent One and their package away from the site. Their mission was successful, but not without consequence._

* * *

In fifty-five seconds, he must be ready to move out from in between worlds, game face on, careless wit back intact, and head in the game.

* * *

_Mister Malone—Batman—Bruce once told him that when he felt like all the world is starting to implode in his head, he only had to go back to his Turning Point._

_Dick decided his Turning Point was in mid-air—that split second right between one of the happiest moments of his life and one of the most terrible. That split second when he realized that the ropes his parents used had snapped and they were falling, falling, falling… dead. That Turning Point was what drove Dick to move on forward; it was among others, surely, but it was the most powerful memory that gives him the strength to get back on his feet and_ fight _._

* * *

Forty-seven seconds and he has to go back to pretending… after Agent One—Tiger had just come out as a double agent working for Checkmate. He had less than a minute to rethink the whole plan, adjust the players on the chess board and see where he stood because the bishop has just turned its coat from black to white.

And Dick liked the black pieces more than the white ones. Black appealed to him. Bruce’s influence, without a question.

* * *

_Never let it be said he didn’t appreciate the cleanliness and purity of the color white though. After all, it suited Tiger very much._

_“You are a circus performer,” the Pashtun said almost scathingly one day as he pulled off his bow tie. They were boarded on a small, borrowed jet heading to New York. They’d just successfully infiltrated a private party in Adelaide, Australia where two Spyral agents had been assigned for a reconnaissance mission. This was after Dick had somehow pulled Tiger onto the Spyral-is-more-than-you-think-let’s-take-it-down bandwagon._

_Tiger gave a weary sigh as he pulled off the once-immaculate white suit, now speckled with dirt and a bit of their targets’ blood. Dick tried not staring as he replaced his shirt with a black one, followed by a heavily pocketed jacket._

_“I was one. And?” Dick asked evenly, despite Tiger’s tone. He felt indignant and he should be defensive with this subject matter, but he learned early on that Tiger’s voice often sounded insulting and that the man could call you an idiot in fifty different ways but would—almost endearingly—settle for just the one._

_“No. You are still one,” Tiger huffed, zipping up his jacket. “It shows in the way you fight. You’d do all those fancy jumps if you could. You’re flashy. It’s almost like you can’t help but show off.”_

_Dick hummed thoughtfully. “You aren’t exactly toning down on the theatrics yourself, Tony,” He replied, eyebrow raising in amusement in the way Tiger glowered at him. “What? You think I didn’t notice?”_

_Tiger simply huffed again before turning away from Dick. “And I don’t mean that’s bad. You got the mad skillz and the good looks. Hey, I bet if you tried my kind of espionage and smiled as much as you glared at people, you’d get a lot of ladies, too,” Dick said with a grin, motioning wildly with his hands. When Tiger frowned at him like he’d been insulted, Dick added, “I’m trying to compliment you here, T.”_

_The older man huffed again before shaking his head. There was a shadow of a smile Dick caught a glimpse of before Tiger tossed a .45 his way. “And I’m trying to tell you to stop showing off,” he retorted in his usual stern tone. “Next time, don’t throw your gun.”_

_Not only was he good-looking in white (anything, actually), he was also inspirational. Dick decided he’d use that for the next few lines of the Agent 37 theme song._

* * *

In forty seconds, he has to--

God damn it.

Dick didn't even need any more time to call forth the raw anger he'd first felt when the man apologized-- _apologized_ to him for being a turncoat. As if that would be enough.

 _"I have higher allegiances than you,"_ was what the man said. Next thing Dick knew, he was punched in the face. His body moved accordingly, following its survival instincts while his mind still reeled from the shock.

He thought he didn't trust anyone. Obviously, he wasn't all that capable of following his own advice, but _damn_ did he think he knew Tiger. Ironically, Tiger knew him better than himself. Or so the man thought.

 _"I know who you are, Dick. You're a good man. Trusting."_ Agent One added the last word as if it had been a flaw. And maybe it was, but Dick would rather be trusting rather than a heartless murderer. Tiger knows that too so he took advantage of it, like every other predictable bad guy Dick's ever had to fight before. But Dick already knows that kind of game play so he adjusted accordingly: keep Tiger's attention on him long enough to avoid casualties, long enough for Tiger to be pushed towards over the sea where Dick won't be forced to save any unlucky by-stander.

And it went perfectly. Tiger may have thrown him off the burning Spyral chopper and Dick hadn't been given any further chance of talking (flirting) with Checkmate's star pawn anymore, but that didn't mean that this is the end of them.

Dick is sure they'll meet again somewhere, some time from now, somehow; that their paths will cross once (or hopefully a couple times more) as one tries to put an end to Dr. Daedalus' plans by assassinating Helena while the other tries to save said Daedalus vessel from Checkmate's end game; just as Dick's certain Tiger will want to talk to him again in the future, give their almost-there relationship some sort of closure.

The man isn't as heartless as he wants others to think, after all. Just as he's ready to take advantage of Dick's integrity, Dick is ready to take advantage of his stoicism and his need for closure on everything he could possibly apply it on.

This whole mess between Checkmate and Dr. Daedalus is just the perfect opportunity for Dick to hunt the man down and give him exactly that.

Twenty seconds.

* * *

_A message cackled in his ear._

* * *

Ten seconds.

* * *

Helena had just gotten to priority number one after news of Dr. Netz's death reached him. Checkmate is moving out and they're heading for Dr. Daedalus' castle. Closure with Tiger can wait. 

Tiger can wait.

He'll live through that avalanche and he'll hunt Dick down.

Dick will let himself be found and they'll fight to the death, probably. Tiger will maybe want to kill him for real, but he'll fail because-- Because all he'd really want is closure. And hopefully a second chance.

* * *

Dick takes a breath. The world isn't spinning, his insides aren't churning, his chest isn't as tightly clinched anymore.  _I can do this_ , he thinks before he goes down the spiral stairs to where Helena's voice in his mind is somehow leading him.

After this... he'll definitely have a good, long talk with Tiger.

 

 


End file.
